Truth be told, when we dropped the digital hammer on our online ToyFest Winter 2003 event on Monday, Feb. 17, we didn't know what to expect. We had done the Toy Fair thing in New York City for so many years, the radical change of pace - holding our own online event during Toy Fair without actually attending - was, well, disconcerting.

Happily, ToyFest Winter 2003 turned out to be a rousing success and will be a blueprint for how things are done in the future. Though the final numbers aren't yet in, we more than tripled our hit count on the first day. Feb. 17 jumped from our normal of 3 million hits per day to more than 10 million; time spent on spawn.com jumped from our average of 20 minutes to 35 minutes that day.

Todd himself was quite pleased with the effort and most of the fan feedback has been generally positive.

Though there were fewer overall lines fully revealed, we offered several slide shows and a lot of added content. When you factor in ToyFest will be held four times annually, consumers are getting quite a bit of fresh info and photography of our upcoming lines throughout the year.

As soon as our new brick-and-mortar showroom is constructed in Tempe, AZ, we will display in a new virtual showroom tour. And we'll continue to fill in finalized photography and add new lines in upcoming ToyFest presentations.

May is the month for the next ToyFest event. Mark your calendar; it's gonna be good.